This invention relates in general to an electronic musical instrument and more particularly to such a musical instrument which is operated by a player's breath pressure and finger manipulation to realistically reproduce either the sound of well known conventional musical instruments or unique instrument voices.
Conventional woodwind or reed musical instruments require special breath development generally obtained only over long periods of time as a result of intensive practice before reasonably high degrees of skill are developed in operating the instrument. Thereafter an exceptional "ear", or tone distinguishing capability is required to maintain a true pitch in playing a given note on woodwind instruments. Fingering in these instruments is multiple and generally difficult as the position of the fingering keys is dictated by the physical requirements of size and shape of the resonant air column within the instrument body. Moreover, any given woodwind instrument speaks with only one voice which is unalterable. Special effects or qualities may be injected by a player into the one voice, but only after extensive practice with the instrument over long periods of time. A musical instrument is desirable which will allow these special effects to be injected into an instrument voice without undue practice for prolonged periods of time, and which "speaks" in more than one preselected voice.